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News Round-up June 19th
Training and development essential for motivation
A survey by the Association of Accounting Technicians has found, unsurprisingly, that 2 out of 3 employees who receive no training from their organisations, are unmotivated and unwilling to make any effort to progress.
Such employees tend to coast along, working only to get by and hold onto what they see as a job, not a career. Almost the same amount of people who do receive training sponsored by their employer expressed loyalty to their organisations and were in some cases ‘exceptionally motivated.’
“Perhaps it is a trust issue” said Training Synergy director David Field, “some employers think they will just be paying for their people to get better jobs elsewhere. But when training is mapped against real business results, it seems obvious that some kind of investment is essential.”
1948 – 2008 Happy Birthday to the NHS
Sixty years after its inception and having weathered many political storms and changes in structure, the NHS is still a model of envy around the world. So what has changed?
Apart from a greater input from private providers one of the greatest changes has been in technology, with IT now accounting for a quarter of the outlay of the NHS cash budget. Most of this is down to the much maligned National Programme for IT which aims to link trusts around the country and offer greater patient choice.
From Choose and Book to the Picture Archiving and Communications Systems, which allows doctors to immediately view X-rays at their computers, there has been massive investment in improving communication throughout the service. Problems with the implementation of new Patient Administration Systems has attracted bad press, but Chief Executive David Nicholson remains committed to the project which he still sees as cost effective.
Many Happy Returns!
Training budgets remain soft targets
Perhaps one fall out from all that investment in technology is cash shortage in other areas. This is where the organisations typically start raiding the training budget as a short term fix, despite the real impact on longer term performance.
Strategic Health Authorities are no exception and have so far skimmed more than £70m from their education and training budgets in a bid to make up for cash short falls. Desperate times requiring desperate measures?
More worrying are those authorities who left around £30m in training budgets unspent. With the continuing serious concerns about UK skills shortages can we afford to siphon off much needed funds and still less not use what money is actually made available for training? Perhaps this is a training issue?
Leadership and Communication: the new ‘must have’ skills for IT professionals
With so many high profile IT projects encountering implementation delays and end user hostility, IT professionals are realising that technical know how and project/service methodology skills are simply not enough.
“We are seeing much more interest in leadership and communications skills training from the clients we support in major IT projects” says Neal Blakes, Service Delivery Manager for Training Synergy. “When things go wrong, which they do more often than not in large scale projects, it is the people with the ability to communicate rather than alienate, who emerge as effective leaders.”
“As well as technical competence we are increasingly looking for proven leadership abilities from our project managers. At the same time we have noticed a lot more interest from clients in our range of leadership and management development courses” says Blakes.
As the wise person said “The biggest mistake in communication is the belief that it has already taken place.”
Story Date
18 June 2008
More information
For more information about any of these news stories, please contact either Daniel Hanlon or David Field.
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0800 072 5900
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